The papers in this volume, adapted from those given at the 1982 Byzantine Studies Symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, are the result of a four-year pilot project sponsored by Dumbarton Oaks and the Centre for Byzantine Studies at the University of Birmingham. The authors trance elements of continuity and change in the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries by analyzing two groups of evidence: the charters of the monasteries of Mount Athos, and the Ottoman tax registers, the tahrir defters.